James Rodriguez is a walking drama for the Colombian media.
Pretty much anything the Everton player does is analysed and picked to pieces more than the actions of any other footballer from the country.
That can seem positive when things are going well, like with the player’s first few months at Goodison Park. Then there was great joy that James was becoming a star of the Premier League, and was showing Zinedine Zidane and Real Madrid how wrong they were to edge him out of the club.
Then, inevitably, came the injuries, with James unavailable to Carlo Ancelotti for big chunks of the season, often without much being known about the specific issues.
There’d been some suggestion the attacker had been getting himself fit for Colombia’s Copa America campaign, at the expense of Everton, but then he was left out of the national squad due to fitness issues.
James was shocked and released a public statement questioning the reasoning. Now his ‘personal doctor’ Luis Javier Fernandez has also questioned the decision of manager Reinaldo Rueda.
Marca Claro quote him as saying: “James had muscle injuries a few months ago, now he has had small tears. That is why his recovery is faster and more agile. There are no divergences between the medical concepts, but clinically he can play the Copa America.”
Rueda obviously thinks otherwise, and should Everton hold out hope of James staying and performing at his best consistently next season, missing the summer tournament and healing those ‘small tears’ doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
